Hi everyone,
I will be taking my GMAT in the next 2 - 3 months and I would like to hear what my chances are for getting into a top school for a MSc Finance.
I am from The Netherlands, 23 years old (tomorrow!), currently in my fifth year at my university, white and a male.
Education:
At the end of this school year I will have ~400 ECTS. These are divided into:
- BSc Business Economics (3-year-programme, my main study programme and the one connecting best to the master's programme I would like to pursue, average grade will be ~8.0/10);
- LL.B. Dutch Law (3-year-programme, average grade will be ~6.0 - 6.5/10);
- Honours College (excellence programme connected to the BSc Business Economics consisting of 45 ECTS spread out over 2.5 years, average grade will be ~7.5/10);
- Miscellaneous (25 - 30 ECTS collected from courses in other study programmes and activities, including several in mathematics).
Work experience:
- Professional online poker player (over the course of 3 - 4 years my pre-tax earnings are somewhere around the €100,000 mark, I stopped playing at the end of 2015 because of the next point, I have also coached several players both online and offline);
- My own company (since the start of 2016 I've been an online reseller of a vast variety of consumer goods, which I buy from sellers all across Europe and sell in The Netherlands and Belgium, revenue at the end of 2016 will be ~€150,000 with a net (after tax) profit of ~€20,000 - €25,000, expecting to grow heavily next year if I am not selected for a foreign university);
- Mentor (explaining first-year students what to expect from their upcoming journey both in terms of course load and student life in the city, 7 weeks in weekly 2-hour sessions);
- Student assistant (connected to the point above, the first hour involved teaching a course called International Business and the second hour was meant for mentoring).
Miscellaneous:
- I have lived on my own since I was 18 and have always been financially independent;
- Through the excellence programme I was selected for a trip to Washington D.C. to meet and work with Law students from the George Washington University on a project involving Environmental Law;
- I've been an active member of the social club associated with the excellence programme. Among other things, I arranged a full 5-day-trip to a foreign capital city in Europe for 30 people together with 3 others;
- I will have 2 reference letters. One of them is from a professor I worked with in a project that was connected to the excellence programme and it involved research in the field of Finance. The other is from my English teacher.
My biggest worries at this point are not scoring high enough on the GMAT, applying late and my relatively low grades. I'm also a bit worried about my age, since I have seen a lot of 21-year-olds who are also applying.
I greatly appreciate any feedback.
Thank you for reading.